Center for Security Policy
National Security Alert
Week of November 20, 2000

A 'Heads-Up' on critical security policy

No. 00-A 42
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Palestinians to Seek Vote on International Observers

Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced its intention to seek action by the United Nations in the coming week on his request that a contingent of "international observers" be deployed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Incredibly, the Israeli government of Ehud Barak has apparently abandoned yet again a principled position by dropping its opposition "in principle" to such a force -- even though that opposition is fully justified by the fact that the "observers" would inevitably serve, as such forces have elsewhere, to protect enemies of the Jewish State engaged in violence against her while impeding Israel's efforts to suppress such violence.

According to published reports, Barak is willing to agree to permit as many as 2000 international observers to take up stations in the disputed territories provided Arafat resumes negotiations on a final settlement accord. It is bad enough that the Israeli Prime Minister still is operating under the illusion that such negotiations with Arafat can be productive. Worse yet, putting UN personnel, or for that matter Americans, on the ground in areas where violence has been occurring -- or can be expected to occur in the future -- is no formula for peace. Rather, it is doomed to facilitate the unilateral declaration of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state and the interposition of foreign powers to prevent Israel from appropriate responses (e.g., taking back land unwisely ceded to the PA on the assumption the Oslo "peace process" would bear desirable fruit). Neither the United States nor Israel should want any part of this sort of international "help."